MY LOUSY WORLD: Doubting in the dark

Posted 9/9/14

I drove to the store, hoping it would be fixed by the time I got home. It was not. And with no candles and scant battery life in both my flashlights, I was swiftly being enveloped in spooky darkness.

And soon it was complete. I groped for …

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MY LOUSY WORLD: Doubting in the dark

Posted

Just as suddenly as a sneeze at a funeral, silent darkness came upon me.

At 6 p.m. Saturday during Labor Day weekend, a tragic act-of-God occurred and continues unabated as I write this. After a wicked afternoon thunder/lightning storm, the power went off all over my little neighborhood. It wasn’t yet total darkness, but the approaching night loomed menacingly. There was weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth at my townhouse, my friends! I’m a shut-in, ya know?

I drove to the store, hoping it would be fixed by the time I got home. It was not. And with no candles and scant battery life in both my flashlights, I was swiftly being enveloped in spooky darkness.

And soon it was complete. I groped for Trina’s head to pat, assuring her we would be all right. Was I trying to convince her, or myself?

Suddenly a glimmer of hope when I noticed a tiny, blinking light on my closed laptop. “But that’s impossible; there’s no electricity,” I mused.

Ah, but I opened the laptop and realized there are batteries involved; I had several hours of life remaining, as the screen illuminated a small part of my dark, bleak world.

Thus I began penning — after dry months of not writing a single word — Things I Learned During the Great Blackout.

• We truly don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone. Never does the beauty of endless mindless TV illuminate itself like during a nighttime power outage.

• I can’t count all the times I’ve heard and ignored the warning: “Always make sure the flashlight has adequate battery life and candles nearby in case of emergency.”

For the first hour, my cell phone screen was the brightest light in the house.

• I’ve never felt so alone! Before I discovered the laptop, I found myself pathetically doing a newspaper crossword puzzle by dim flashlight. Oddly, I was able to swiftly complete the entire puzzle — something I’m rarely capable of. (Small victory though when I’ve got money on the LSU/Wisconsin game which I know “should” be on ESPN).

• Around about the third hour, it hit me: most in the neighborhood can call it an early night and fall into a delicious slumber.

I slept till noon; I won’t even start yawning for another seven hours. I am truly screwed!

• Another sobering realization struck me: I can’t even make myself some coffee. No TV, no Internet, no microwave, no coffee … the word “unbearable” comes to mind!

• It’s confounding how many times a person will absent-mindedly flip a light switch during a blackout … like every single time I entered the bathroom with a full bladder. Call me a sissy-boy, but I sat to pee on this occasion.

• My dog Trina might be a much happier dog were it not for electricity. Faced with cold, dark reality, there was little to do but take her for an extra-long walk. (But if a person were forced to walk every day … that would be terrible and probably not very healthy).

• Nine months from tonight, there shall be a great population explosion among East Sheridan, 31st Street and surrounding areas. Not everyone is doing crossword puzzles by flashlight.

• Another frightening thought: What if these radical Islamist terrorists vowing to soon destroy us were somehow able to cast our entire nation into a prolonged blackout?

ISIS recently put out an instructional video to their “faithful,” called “How to Make a Bubonic Plague Bomb.” What horrors are these evil geniuses not capable of imagining, then perpetrating upon mankind?

It’s sobering — actually terrifying to acknowledge all the pure evil in the world today, and a U.S. government doing very little about it. (My troubled, sadly well-informed mind probably desperately needed these six hours of no TV news).

• And it is done. Nearing the eighth hour, about 10 lights and my TV all came on at once in an exhilarating second of glorious relief.

Finally I can get back to shallow thinking, mindless TV, and not be forced into tedious endeavors like writing, exercising with my gleeful, grateful dog and praying.

Boy, what did they ever do with their days and nights back in the day before electricity was invented? God only knows, but it must have been an empty, wasted existence!

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